The Berlin State Opera’s new
production of Parsifal could hardly
have been burdened by greater expectations with respect to conductor,
orchestra, cast, and director, let alone their combination, yet reality did not
disappoint. Parsifal-stagings must
now be considered post-Stefan Herheim, just as much as an earlier era thought
of pre- and post-Wieland Wagner. (We still do too, of course, even those who
never saw Wieland’s legendary Bayreuth staging.) Dmitri Tcherniakov proves,
unsurprisingly, very much his own man; it would be as absurd to imitate Herheim
as it would his predecessor. But perhaps, consciously or otherwise, he may be
understood to continue some of the psychological explorations which seemed
increasingly to come to the fore in the final two years of Herheim’s
production.

The outer acts, in their
different but similar ways, suggest a Russian thinker approaching Wagner.
Crowds, their detailed yet certainly never pedantic direction long a
Tcherniakov speciality, offer ample possibility for comparison. (That word ‘possibility’
is crucial here; like Herheim and indeed many of the most interesting contemporary
opera directors, Tcherniakov seems more concerned to open up possibilities than
to present definitive verdicts.) Modern, relatively indistinct dress does not
distract, but suggests sameness and indeed an ossified dedication to something
that no longer pertains: a lesson for ‘traditional’ staging fetishists, among
others. (Kinder, macht neues!) But
Tcherniakov does not disregard religion as religion; it is not a proxy for
political or æsthetic concerns. As in Wagner, the relationship is complex,
indeed provocative.

There is here a (once) Christian
theology gone wrong, as Wagner’s conception of Monsalvat demands. Just as in the
second act of Götterdämmerung, when
increasingly desperate pleas are made to gods who have already departed the
stage, so in Parsifal, the crowd
continues to believe and to act out of desperation from that belief, or at
least to act as if it still believed. A world of Russian holy men, perhaps
allied to the mendicants of Boris Godunov,
or indeed to the anti-Wagnerian challenges of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, reacts
with that of Wagner’s still-live (and later, Tcherniakov’s still-life) contest
between Feuerbach and Schopenhauer. These are old believers and, perhaps, Old
Believers; certainly the final outward turn of the community on stage,
magnificently presented as if a revivification of an Old Master painting,
suggests Khovanschina with a
Goya-like twist. Will the new rule, political or monastic, of Parsifal bring
more of the same – Gurnemanz, after his shocking stabbing in the back of
Kundry, seems effortlessly to have transferred his loyalty to the new regime –
or something different? We do not know; nor do they. Who or what, if anything,
has been redeemed? What we do know is that Gurnemanz has swiftly put paid to the 'purely human' - as the younger, Feuerbachian Wagner would have had it - rekindling of sexual relations between Kundry, or Woman, and Amfortas, or Christ, or at least Jesus of Nazareth.

There are certainly clues.
Amfortas is identified more with Christ than I can previously recall. He is
carried by the knights so as to make him, however unhappily and unwillingly, a visual
if perhaps not spiritual reincarnation. More disturbingly still, we see during
the final scene of the first act, a re-enactment not only of Amfortas’s
wounding but also of some form of transubstantiation, or perhaps mere
vampirism, of his own blood. The sustenance drawn may well be nothing – a negative
reading of Feuerbach – or it may even be primarily vengeful. There is no doubt,
however, that this sick community requires it, and, most intriguingly of all,
it is commanded by Titurel, whom we see walk on stage and enter his coffin. Is
he a fraud or a thaumaturge? The knights are desperate for him to touch them.
He certainly appears to be pulling the theological strings of a cult that has
become nasty indeed.

The sameness of the first act
– the scene does not shift during the Transformation
Music, and indeed the production here burns as slowly and yet as brightly as the work – receives its response in what to begin with seems the unconnected
action of the second. Here, Tcherniakov offers a brave, challenging exploration
of sexuality, above all of those paedophiliac tendencies our society would
desperately wish away as aberration, as the misdeeds of individual ‘monsters’.
Klingsor, the very image of a tabloid newspaper’s ‘paedophile monster’, has
built a home with his daughters, the Flowermaidens. Some are young; some are
older; all are dressed as ‘pretty girls’. Such is clearly what has proved the
undoing of Monsalvat’s knights. He clearly repels Kundry, not least when he
paws her, but she of course remains in his power. (Perhaps because he has put
himself beyond the ‘moral’ pale? Very Nietzschean. Or perhaps we might think of
Crime and Punishment.)

When in Klingsor’s power, she
is certainly willing to learn from his example, or from what it might suggest. Her kissing him already suggests an inconvenient truth concerning the complexity of abuse. Wagner’s proto-Freudian path of realisation is given shocking realisation in
Kundry’s education of Parsifal, partly visualised in the staging of his
memories. He and Herzeleide were close, perhaps too close. She is furious when
she sees his adolescent first exploration with a girl-next-door, or perhaps
even his sister. The emotional fall-out kills her, just as Kundry tells him –
and us. Kundry, however, attempts to play upon those complex feelings, to
reignite them, reintroducing him to the miniature rocking horse with which
once, under Herzeleide’s spell, he had played. Quite what happens remains
unclear, since the moment of the ‘kiss’ – is it perhaps more than that? – takes
place off stage. The transformation it effects, when undressed, Parsifal,
followed by Kundry, runs back on stage, is, however, never in doubt. The would-be
sign of the Cross in this dark world is Parsifal’s piercing of Klingsor with
the spear.

A crucial feature of the
production that has tied both acts together is the circular seating and action
of the respective crowds: knights and Flowermaidens. Sickness pervades both;
they may well be more closely connected. The third act continues the work of
drawing the two together, though again, suggestively rather than didactically. Ritual
to drama – to ritual aufgehoben by
drama. But was it the wrong drama? When, in the third act, Amfortas opens his
father’s tomb and has the body fall to the ground, is that simply revenge for
the inhuman treatment – the abuse – our Christ-like, yet ultimately not-so-very-Christ-like,
victim has suffered? Or is it also perhaps a hint at the death of God, Titurel
being his father? Nietzsche as well as those Russian writers seems hinted at,
or at least available. Nihilism or theological rescue mission? As when one
reads Nietzsche, perspectivism demands and yet obscures the answers.

Tcherniakov has staged a
number of operas in Berlin with Daniel Barenboim, but this is the first Wagner
drama, and indeed Tcherniakov’s first Wagner outside Russia. Barenboim has, of
course, considerably longer experience, and put it to great use. The expected
long line both complemented and, in its dialectic with tonal and timbral
variegation below and/or above, questioned the ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ of
what we saw on stage. The extraordinary world-weariness, which must yet go on,
of the Prelude to the third act would have been worth the price of admission
alone, not least on account of the superlative playing of the Staatskapelle
Berlin, for whose dark-hued contribution throughout, occasionally disrupted by
woodwind screams so vivid that they seemed the timbral instantiation of Kundry’s
chromaticism, no praise could be high enough. Indeed, the road to Schoenberg,
Webern, and to Boulez – his ninetieth birthday honoured in these Staatsoper Festtage – became apparently clear, in
all its Boulezian complexity. Stage action may not have been subject to serial
procedures, but in some sense its interlocking with the score through such
close musico-dramatic collaboration, suggested such an analogy. Certainly, Boulez's proliferative technique is worth considering not just as having roots in Wagner, but as one potential tool in our quest to understand him.

Much the same might be said
of the work of this excellent cast. Andreas Schager cemented his reputation as
the finest Heldentenor alive, indeed
the finest I have heard in the flesh. His tone beguiled yet remained at the
service of the text. Moreover, his movements on stage offered a well-nigh
perfect portrayal of the awkwardness of an adolescent discovering his
sexuality. His reluctance to show himself, hiding himself under his hood,
pulled down by Herzeleide and Kundry alike, finds its counterpart in his
persistent changing of clothes: seemingly a desire to be clean that can never
be fulfilled. Anja Kampe triumphantly overcame illness so as fully to inhabit
her role. She seemed less to play Kundry than simply to be Kundry, tireless in
fulfilling the demands placed upon her by Wagner and Tcherniakov alike. René
Pape’s sonorous Gurnemanz, perhaps more beautifully sung than any I have heard,
was chillingly brought into question by that final act of slaughter. Tómas
Tómasson’s Klingsor and Matthias Hölle’s Titurel both impressed greatly too, like
Kampe loyal servants to composer, to director, and most crucially of all, to
the fusion of the two. Wolfgang Koch's Amfortas entered into that musico-dramatic realm with exemplary marriage of Wort und Ton: Sachs turned (very) sour.Choral singing and acting were likewise of the highest
standard throughout, a credit to Tcherniakov, to Barenboim, and to chorus
master, Martin Wright.

Why, then, was there such
appalling booing to be heard at the end, including, incomprehensibly, some
apparently levelled at Barenboim? The answer, alas, is all too readily
apparent. If there is anything an unthinking audience cannot stand it is to be made
to think; if there is anything an abusive society cannot stand it is to be
shown that it is abusive. Such fascistic behaviour of course confirms the need
for the very productions it so threateningly excoriates.

I very much enjoyed reading this review, Mark. I listened to the broadcast on Saturday - twice - and will see it in Berlin April 18, by which time hopefully every will be well, and settled. I have liked what I have seen from Tcherniakov in the past and see no reason for that not to continue.

nmharleyrider: I'd like to know who is above average, in that case... Furtwangler? Mahler? Wagner himself? And even if Barenboim weren't so good, do you really think an appropriate reaction to be farmyard noises?

Kathy: Thank you so much. Delighted you will see it. Please let me know what you think, even if less positive...

Many thanks for this review - interesting and thought-provoking, as ever. I saw this Parsifal six days later, and was impressed by the strength of the cast and the production too - by and large it was well thought-out though not excessively complex or cluttered.

Was that was the original 1882 production depicted in Gurnemanz's overhead projections? And I assumed the set was a nod to this production too - perhaps what was left of the original grail temple after it had been built around (hence the modern windows "built into" its walls)?

I was puzzled to hear several people commenting afterwards that they had to shut their eyes, so shockingly modern and ugly was the production. Yet there is a grail temple, Kundry dies at the end and we even see a white dove at one point! About as "classical" a reading of Parsifal as you're likely to get nowadays, to my way of thinking anyway.

Looking forward to your take on the curate's egg of the West-Eastern Divan concert, and on the number of people who walked out during Derive 2. Presumably they'd come for Bolero.